Environment Issues
 

We had a thread on this, that was killed when many of my older threads were killed by the old mods.

So today, with Senators taking the bush admin to task over his most recent attack on the environment, I thought it only appropriate to start a new one and summarize the previous thread and issues, plus look at the ones raised today.

First off, the Clean Air Act. A policy put in place by the Clinton administration, bush saw fit to gut it and replace it with his own Clear Skies Act. I won't go into too much detail (unless asked) but it essentially undid all the polices of the Clean Air act, and once again allowed companies to pollute without any fear of regulation or fines. In fact, it even rolled back protections that were present prior to the CAA, and has since increased pollution exponentially.

This was also followed by the repeal of the Clean Water Act. Bush also removed the industry regulations which protected water and regulated pollution. This included provisions which he had the FDA put in place that for the first time in American history allowed municipalities to 'mix' sewage waste into drinking water sources without being treated, to reduce the load on many aging waste water processing facilities. To date, this made many lakes and streams polluted - in fact right now there are only 2 states left in America, take a guess which, two they are (Hawaii and Alaska). All other states have restrictions in place to keep people from eating wild caught fish due to the amount of pollution present.

To 'lessen the impact of wildfires' bush then repealed acts protecting forests and opened them up to loggers in his 'Health Forests Initiative'. Many protected areas which had never had commercial industry touch them have now been turned into logging sites, 20 million acres to be precise.

To allow access to these areas for loggers, and to allow oil exploration to occur in protected sanctuaries bush then had to repeal the 'Roadless Area Conservation Rule'. Because such areas were protected, roads were off-limits. Bush repealed that rule to allow roads to be built to allow commercial vehicles to access all areas of protected sanctuaries.

Then there is the matter of the 'Superfund'. For those who don't remember this, it was setup in 1980, and the EPA then identified the worst polluted areas, and identified the companies responsibly. The Superfund Act forced polluters in these areas to invest money into cleaning up their mess. Money was deposited into an account, and the intrest earned went to fund yearly clean up. It allowed many areas which many thought to be damaged beyond repair to once again be taken off the polluted areas list. However, when bush took office he depleted this account for his own purposes, and then moved the burden of paying into the account from the companies who did the polluting, to the tax payers. He then killed the fund, citing that it was too much of a burden on the tax payers, and claimed he was 'helping' tax payers, failing to mention he initially moved the payments from the offenders to the people.

Well, now that we are up to speed, there is this article...

Senators question Bush endangered wildlife plan

http://news.**********/s/nm/usa_wild...LfA9LMCRas0NUE

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A Bush administration plan to change rules of the Endangered Species Act protecting American wildlife drew pointed questions on Wednesday from five U.S. senators, who called the proposed changes "troubling."

The senators posed 15 questions to Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne, asking for full responses within one month, with no forward movement on rule-making until they are answered.

"If the draft revisions had been in place thirty years ago, it is hard to imagine that we ever could have achieved the successes -- with bald eagles, grizzly bears, sea turtles, sea otters and many other species -- of which we now are deservedly proud," the senators wrote in a letter to Kempthorne.

The letter was signed by independent senators Joseph Lieberman (news, bio, voting record) of Connecticut and Bernard Sanders (news, bio, voting record) of Vermont, and Democrats Barbara Boxer (news, bio, voting record) of California, Frank Lautenberg (news, bio, voting record) of New Jersey and Benjamin Cardin (news, bio, voting record) of Maryland.

An Interior Department spokesman, Hugh Vickery, said the proposed rules the senators questioned were part of an old document not now under consideration. He said the department is looking for recommendations on how to administer the Endangered Species Act more consistently.

Environmental activists raised alarms about the draft rules change last month, saying the revisions would weaken the act so much that about 80 percent of the 1,300 species now on the endangered list would lose protection.

*snip*

The bush admin is now trying to take 80% of the animals currently under federal protection - off the list, in efforts to open those areas to logging, oil exploration, and use as military training grounds.

Just another attempt by this administration to put the needs of corporations ahead of the environment, as well as the health and safety of those who live around those areas.